I wrote this with racial minorities in mind, I suppose I should have been more general though and left out race specific points.

Your argument for tracking is persuasive and is, I believe, the view of the majority. These other points can offer the other side of the picture: 1, students in lower tracks are given a curriculum with unchallenging and repetitive tasks because of their “lower ability” 2. they feel inferior and higher track students feel superior. 3. Low-track students are tracked to fail as they are given fewer resources, teachers have lower expectations, they themselves have lower expectations. We all know how important it is to believe you can do something. 4. Tracking is related to stratification: low-income students are disproportionately placed in low-track classes. This reinforces the social class structure.

I agree that home life has a substantial effect on students behavior. This piece is placing an emphasis on the school system. If nurtured correctly and inspired by good teachers any child can have an interest in learning. Yes classes are too big.

It’s all very hard to say for sure what is best, all we can do is try to get as clear an understanding of the problems from all possible perspectives and hopefully find solutions from there. I appreciate the perspective you offered. It sounds like it’s a view that comes from plenty of first hand experience.

1.You betray a certain racial bias. Number 7 begins with “If a child of a racial minority who is being discriminated against in employment …” The problems you then describe would be those of any child with poor parents; racial discrimination is an egregious addition that adds nothing to the point. Moreover, after having spent over twenty-five years in the Virginia legal system dealing in part with child abuse/neglect Social Services cases, I can tell you that a goodly number of the minority (as well as majority) parents who are poor and without employment are that way because they got no education themselves when they were students, have persistent drug and criminal problems and rotten attitudes toward anyone attempting to help them better their lots. Their children are almost all doomed in the educational process, at school and at home. Without better parental influences, most end up no better than their parents. You can’t just throw this problem at employer racism.

2.Your 11 makes tracking an evil. Unfortunately, tracking does not occur often enough. The standard, and wrong, attitude in public schools is to keep the most intelligent in the same classes with the less intelligent, usually with the explanation that to separate them would somehow humiliate those left behind. This is the result of a bias against the intelligent students, presumably based on the idea that as they won the IQ lottery, they need no more attention, and that giving them any special attention will somehow be giving them what they don’t deserve. In actuality, what you end up with is a number of very smart kids bored to death at spending year after year in classes in which they are not challenged, listening while their teachers try to teach to the dumbest kids in the class, trying to teach them to read, write, do simple math, etc. while ignoring the more intelligent students. What is accomplished is hat many intelligent students, a prime resource of the nation, are permanently turned off on the entire educational process. We need more tracking, not less. Your concerns about how intelligent students from poor backgrounds or from homes where English is not the primary language are disadvantaged in the educational system are legitimate, but these students are not helped by refusing to track. Rather, their issues need to be addressed and they need to be encouraged to excel so as to join their intellectual equals. Place the smart kids together and challenge them and the country will benefit.

3. My last criticism is that you do not place any of the blame for the problems on the children themselves or their parents. Many of the students are simply disruptive and have no interest at all in becoming educated; nor do their parents care. I spent most of my education in public schools, but did my last three years in a private school. It was a night and day experience. I usually give four reasons why private schools are more successful than public schools. A couple of them are related to funding: (a) smaller classes (20 or so, compared to 35 or 40 in a typical public school class),(b) not having to deal with students of less than average ability. However, the most important difference is that if a student is too disruptive the school can expel him, and the parents, having paid a substantial sum to have the kid there, can be counted on to care if he gets canned. This is not the case with all to many parents in public school. I taught 8th and 10th grade English my first year out of college. After my first grading period, I had failed so many (for simply not bothering to pay attention or do the work) that I dreaded my first PTA meeting. One parent came to see me. Apparently, no one else cared. If the disruptive students could be kicked out of public school so that the rest, who want and education could get it, public education would improve immeasurably. Unfortunately, because of funding issues (federal money determined by student numbers), the reliance of parents on the school system as free daycare, and a persistent fuzzy attitude that “every child needs an education” we have come to allow the most outrageous “students” to hold everyone else hostage to their behaviors. We ought to allow and encourage the schools to pitch out whoever won’t obey the rules and who won’t at least try to benefit from the learning experience. As a compensation, we could then make it easier for those bounced to return to separate schcols set up for those who have decided to return and value what they once rejected.